Bibi Jagdish Kaur

Bibi Jagdish Kaur is a survivor of the November 1984 pogrom in Delhi and the eyewitness whose evidence led the Delhi High Court to convict the Congress leader Sajjan Kumar. The Tribune describes her as an Amritsar resident. She is a living person, and what follows comes from court records and published reports.

What she lost. On 1 and 2 November 1984, in Raj Nagar, Palam Colony, in the Delhi Cantonment area, five members of her family were killed: her husband, her 18-year-old son and three cousins, according to The Tribune. LiveLaw names the five dead as Kehar Singh, Gurpreet Singh, Raghuvender Singh, Narender Pal Singh and Kuldeep Singh. A gurdwara in Raj Nagar Part II was also burned.

Key moments

• 1985: she gives her account to the Ranganath Misra Commission. The Wire reports that a court later praised that deposition as free of embellishments, inconsistencies or falsehoods.
• 2013: a Delhi trial court convicts five other accused of murder and related offences but acquits Sajjan Kumar. The Wire says it accepted her testimony but acquitted him because his name was not in the original consolidated FIR of 1984. She and the CBI appeal.
• 17 December 2018: the Delhi High Court, with Justices S. Muralidhar and Vinod Goel, reverses the acquittal and sentences Sajjan Kumar to life imprisonment for criminal conspiracy and abetment. It calls the November 1984 killings of Sikhs crimes against humanity. LiveLaw reports that it praised her courage in pursuing the case.
• Her testimony, as the judgment records it: around 9 am on 2 November she went to a police post to lodge a report. She saw a public meeting attended by Sajjan Kumar, then the local MP, and heard him call for the killing of Sikhs. She also heard the post's officer in charge ask the mob how many Sikhs they had burnt (The Tribune).
• She says she was later offered Rs 8 crore, a plot and resettlement abroad if she withdrew the case, and that she refused (The Tribune, August 2026).
• August 2026: Sajjan Kumar dies while serving his life sentence. The Tribune interviewed her the day after.

What she is remembered for: she is the survivor whose evidence led to the first conviction of a senior Congress politician for the 1984 killings, as The Tribune puts it. The Wire calls her the star witness in the case. She pursued the case for more than three decades.